The alt-weekly Colorado Springs Independent has joined with the daily Colorado Springs Gazette to publish tandem endorsements regarding two upcoming ballot questions. "We have set aside our differences to graphically illustrate how important it is for citizens to vote this fall to ensure the short- and long-term health of the city we call home," Independent publisher John Weiss says. "Join with us to help save our city from a terrible -- yet still avoidable -- fate."

Continue ReadingCompeting Colorado Springs Papers Band Together for Endorsements

Independent film is more reliant on film critics than mainstream big-budget film, with critics often having the ability to "help drive positive word of mouth and nudge arthouse moviegoers into seats without a big marketing spend," Variety reports. And the distributors of indie film say they're feeling the pain from "the loss of regional movie reviewers and diminishing newspaper space." Strand Releasing's Marcus Hu says his company has been particularly hurt by Village Voice Media's practice of assigning reviews to a few critics that run in every VVM market. "Before, at least, you had a new shot in each market," he says.

Continue ReadingIndie Film Distributors Say They’re Hurt by Media Cutbacks

Small Society, the company whose work on iPhone applications for the Obama campaign, Whole Foods and Zipcar has earned wide recognition and praise in the growing app development field, is partnering with Pre1 Software and the parent company of Willamette Week and Santa Fe Reporter to develop an iPhone publishing platform which they hope to make available to AAN publishers by late 2009. "We think this may be the killer app for alt weeklies," Willamette Week editor Mark Zusman says.

Continue ReadingHeralded iPhone Developer Working on App for AAN Members

The band's latest album, Backspacer, will be released on Sept. 20 with a nine-panel cover concept created and executed by Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins). The New York Times reports that the band's partnership with the alt-cartoonist came about "partly as a result of the transformations of their fields by new media, since the internet has wreaked the same havoc on newspapers as it has on the music industry," a point Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder expands on. "It used to be real simple," Vedder says. "Dan writes a strip, it gets in the paper, people read it, Dan gets paid. That's how we felt too: make records, people buy them at a record store, we tour, there you go. It's not that simple anymore." MORE: On his blog, Perkins has one small correction to the piece.

Continue ReadingTom Tomorrow Designs Pearl Jam Album Cover

In the past, AAN's editorial committee has initiated and overseen a number of editorial projects for use in multiple markets. This year, however, the committee is approaching shared projects in a slightly different way and offering four $500 payments for stories from AAN papers that can be used in other markets.

Continue ReadingAAN to Offer $500 for Shareable Stories

The brief filed yesterday asks the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a highly unusual opinion issued earlier this year by a panel of the same court, which ruled that the Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA) violates the First Amendment. The case began when two former city councilors in Alpine, Tex., were indicted under TOMA for discussing city business via private e-mail messages. Although the charges were dropped, the politicians filed a lawsuit charging that TOMA violated their right to free speech. AAN joined two dozen other media organizations in signing onto the amicus brief, which was written and organized by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Continue ReadingAAN Joins Amicus in Support of Texas’ Open Meeting Law